"Who is that man, and what have you done to him?"
Slingsby looked round unconcernedly.
"Oh, that's only Peiffer," he replied. "Peiffer making frightfulness."
"Peiffer?"
The name was quite strange to me.
"Yes. Don't you know him? He's a product of 1914," and Slingsby leaned
towards me a little. "Peiffer is an officer in the German Navy. You
would hardly guess it, but he is. Now that their country is at war,
officers in the German Navy have a marked amount of spare time which
they never had before. So Peiffer went to a wonderful Government
school in Hamburg, where in twenty lessons they teach the gentle art
of espionage, a sort of Berlitz school. Peiffer ate his dinners and
got his degrees, so to speak, and now he's at Lisbon putting obi on
me."
"It seems rather infantile, and must be annoying," I said; but
Slingsby would only accept half the statement. "Infantile, yes.
Annoying, not at all. For so long as Peiffer is near me, being
frightful, I know he's not up to mischief."
"Mischief!" I cried. "That fellow? What mischief can he do?"
Slingsby viciously crushed the stub of his cigarette in the ashtray.
"A deuce of a lot, my friend. Don't make any mistake. Peiffer's
methods are infantile and barbaric, but he has a low and fertile
cunning in the matter of ideas. I know. I have had some."
And Slingsby was to have more, very much more: in the shape of a great
many sleepless nights, during which he wrestled with a dreadful
uncertainty to get behind that square red face and those shining
pince-nez, and reach the dark places of Peiffer's mind.
The first faint wisp of cloud began to show six weeks later, when
Slingsby happened to be in Spain.
"Something's up," he said, scratching his head. "But I'm hanged if I
can guess what it is. See what you can make of it"; and here is the
story which he told.
Three Germans dressed in the black velvet corduroy, the white
stockings and the rope-soled white shoes of the Spanish peasant,
arrived suddenly in the town of Cartagena, and put up at an inn in a
side-street near the harbour. Cartagena, for all that it is one of the
chief naval ports of Spain, is a small place, and the life of it ebbs
and flows in one narrow street, the Calle Mayor; so that very little
can happen which is not immediately known and discussed. The arrival
of the three mysterious Germans provoked, consequently, a deal of
gossip and curiosity, and the curiosity was increased when the German
Consul sitting in front of the Casino loudly professed complete
ignorance of these very doubtful compatriots of his, and an exceeding
great contempt for them. The next morning, however, brought a new
development. The three Germans complained publicly to the Alcalde.
They had walked through Valencia, Alicante, and Murcia in search of
work, and everywhere they had been pestered and shadowed by the
police.
"Our Consul will do nothing for us," they protested indignantly. "He
will not receive us, nor will any German in Cartagena. We are poor
people." And having protested, they disappeared in the night.
But a few days later the three had emerged again at Almeria, and at a
mean cafe in one of the narrow, blue-washed Moorish streets of the old
town. Peiffer was identified as one of the three--not the Peiffer who
had practised frightfulness in Lisbon, but a new and wonderful
Peiffer, who inveighed against the shamelessness of German officials
on the coasts of Spain. At Almeria, in fact, Peiffer made a scene at
the German Vice-Consulate, and, having been handed over to the police,
was fined and threatened with imprisonment. At this point the story
ended.
"What do you make of it?" asked Slingsby.
"First, that Peiffer is working south; and, secondly, that he is
quarrelling with his own officials."
"Yes, but quarrelling with marked publicity," said Slingsby. "That, I
think we shall find, is the point of real importance. Peiffer's
methods are not merely infantile; they are elaborate. He is working
down South. I think that I will go to Gibraltar. I have always wished
to see it."
Whether Slingsby was speaking the truth, I had not an idea. But he
went to Gibraltar, and there an astonishing thing happened to him. He
received a letter, and the letter came from Peiffer. Peiffer was at
Algeciras, just across the bay in Spain, and he wanted an interview.
He wrote for it with the most brazen impertinence.
"I cannot, owing to this with-wisdom-so-easily-to-have-been-avoided
war, come myself to Gibraltar, but I will remain at your disposition
here."
"_That_," said Slingsby, "from the man who was making frightfulness at
me a few weeks ago, is a proof of some nerve. We will go and see
Peiffer. We will stay at Algeciras from Saturday to Monday, and we
will hear what he has to say."
A polite note was accordingly dispatched, and on Sunday morning
Peiffer, decently clothed in a suit of serge, was shown into
Slingsby's private sitting-room. He plunged at once into the story of
his wanderings. We listened to it without a sign that we knew anything
about it.
"So?" from time to time said Slingsby, with inflections of increasing
surprise, but that was all. Then Peiffer went on to his grievances.
"Perhaps you have heard how I was treated by the Consuls?" he
interrupted himself to ask suddenly.
"No," Slingsby replied calmly. "Continue!"
Peiffer wiped his forehead and his glasses. We were each one, in his
way, all working for our respective countries. The work was
honourable. But there were limits to endurance. All his fatigue and
perils went for nothing in the eyes of comfortable officials sure of
their salary. He had been fined; he had been threatened with
imprisonment. It was _unverschaemt_ the way he had been treated.
"So?" said Slingsby firmly. There are fine inflections by which that
simple word may be made to express most of the emotions. Slingsby's
"So?" expressed a passionate agreement with the downtrodden Peiffer.
"Flesh and blood can stand it no longer," cried Peiffer, "and my heart
is flesh. No, I have had enough."
Throughout the whole violent tirade, in his eyes, in his voice, in his
gestures, there ran an eager, wistful plea that we should take him at
his face value and believe every word he said.
"So I came to you," he said at last, slapping his knee and throwing
out his hand afterwards like a man who has taken a mighty resolution.
"Yes. I have no money, nothing. And they will give me none. It is
_unverschaemt_. So," and he screwed up his little eyes and wagged a
podgy forefinger--"so the service I had begun for my Government I will
now finish for you."
Slingsby examined the carpet curiously.
"Well, there are possibly some shillings to be had if the service is
good enough. I do not know. But I cannot deal in the dark. What sort
of a service is it?"
"Ah!"
Peiffer hitched his chair nearer.
"It is a question of rifles--rifles for over there," and, looking out
through the window, he nodded towards Gibel Musa and the coast of
Morocco.
Slingsby did not so much as flinch. I almost groaned aloud. We were to
be treated to the stock legend of the ports, the new edition of the
Spanish prisoner story. I, the mere tourist in search of health, could
have gone on with Peiffer's story myself, even to the exact number of
the rifles.
"It was a great plan," Peiffer continued. "Fifty thousand rifles, no
less." There always were fifty-thousand rifles. "They are buried--near
the sea." They always were buried either near the sea or on the
frontier of Portugal. "With ammunition. They are to be landed outside
Melilla, where I have been about this very affair, and distributed
amongst the Moors in the unsubdued country on the edge of the French
zone."
"So?" exclaimed Slingsby with the most admirable imitation of
consternation.
"Yes, but you need not fear. You shall have the rifles--when I know
exactly where they are buried."
"Ah!" said Slingsby.
He had listened to the familiar rigmarole, certain that behind it
there was something real and sinister which he did not know--something
which he was desperately anxious to find out.
"Then you do not know where they are buried?"
"No, but I shall know if--I am allowed to go into Gibraltar. Yes,
there is someone there. I must put myself into relations with him.
Then I shall know, and so shall you."
So here was some part of the truth, at all events. Peiffer wanted to
get into Gibraltar. His disappearance from Lisbon, his reappearance in
corduroys, his quarrelsome progress down the east coast, his letter to
Slingsby, and his story, were all just the items of an elaborate piece
of machinery invented to open the gates of that fortress to him.
Slingsby's only movement was to take his cigarette-case lazily from
his pocket.
"But why in the world," he asked, "can't you get your man in Gibraltar
to come out here and see you?"
Peiffer shook his head.
"He would not come. He has been told to expect me, and I shall give
him certain tokens from which he can guess my trustworthiness. If I
write to him, 'Come to me,' he will say 'This is a trap.'"
Slingsby raised another objection:
"But I shouldn't think that you can expect the authorities to give you
a safe conduct into Gibraltar upon your story."
Peiffer swept that argument aside with a contemptuous wave of his
hand.
"I have a Danish passport. See!" and he took the document from his
breast pocket. It was complete, to his photograph.
"Yes, you can certainly come in on that," said Slingsby. He reflected
for a moment before he added: "I have no power, of course. But I have
some friends. I think you may reasonably reckon that you won't be
molested."